Car dealers are woefully unprepared for electric vehicles: study

2015 Nissan Leaf in front of Longfellow Bridge, Boston [photo: John Briggs]Yet another study has revealed that many dealerships across the United States still don't prioritize electric cars and haven't prepared for their growth. The latest report showed dealerships still practice the same unhealthy habits uncovered in earlier studies, including a lack of electric-car inventory, little to no marketing, and an apparent...

Tesla Model 3 video review compares lower-priced electric car to Model S

Video review of 2017 Tesla Model 3 electric car by Matt Pressman, Evannex [frame from YouTube video]There have been no full reviews of the 2017 Tesla Model 3 to date by automotive media outlets, meaning professional test drivers spend a few days with the car putting it through a standard battery of tests. A few early video reviews, apparently by owners, have also vanished from the Internet, leading to various theories about what owners must...

U.S. Postal Service urged to choose electric delivery trucks

U.S. Postal Service Grumman The current fleet of delivery trucks used by the United States Postal Service have stood the test of time, but their high maintenance costs mean it's time to retire the iconic boxy vehicles. The USPS began soliciting bids in 2016 and five finalists now remain in the running: they are Workhorse/Hackney, AM General, Karsan, Mahindra, and Oshkosh...

Dual-voltage electric-car charging cords: plug confusion for 240 volts?

TurboCord Dual 120V and 240V adapterWhen the first few thousand electric cars went on sale in California in the mid- to late 1990s, they used various different charging methods, each with its own dedicated charging stations. That proved an impediment to adoption, given the high cost of installing different infrastructure for different makes of car. For lower-rate charging, that...

Will Toyota Prius Prime outsell Chevy Volt this year?

2017 Toyota Prius Prime and 2017 Chevrolet Volt with Green Car Reports editor John VoelckerCompared to the U.S. sales of, say, full-size pickup trucks, the monthly reports on deliveries of plug-in hybrid and battery-electric cars contain some fairly low numbers. The Ford F-Series routinely sells 80,000 a month or more, while the most any plug-in car has ever sold in the U.S. is about 3,000 a month. (That statistic excludes Tesla, since...

Is China making U.S. irrelevant to the future of automobiles?

Buick Velite 5, for sale in China, at 2017 Shanghai auto show   [photo: Ronan Glon]The first automobile was invented in Germany in 1885 by Karl Benz, but it was the U.S. that led the building of the global 20th-century automobile industry. Through the turn of the current century, the U.S. new-vehicle market was the world's largest, and General Motors was for decades the world's largest car company. Neither of those is still the...